ST. PAUL – Hello. Tough to say “good morning” when so many good Americans are faced with the horror and misery of another hurricane strike along the Gulf coast.

AP latest: "Hurricane Gustav charged across the Gulf of Mexico on Sunday as residents fled New Orleans and the National Guard prepared to patrol evacuated neighborhoods in a city still recovering three years after Katrina. Gustav dropped from a Category 4 to a Category 3 storm overnight, but forecasters warned it could gain strength from the gulf's warm waters before making landfall as early as Monday. ... A hurricane warning was issued for over 500 miles of Gulf coast from Cameron, La., near the Texas border to the Alabama-Florida state line, meaning hurricane conditions are expected there within 24 hours. Alabama. ... The storm should make landfall somewhere between western Mississippi and East Texas, where evacuations were also under way. It's too early to know whether New Orleans will take another direct hit."

White House officials announced this morning what Politico reported last night: President Bush is unlikely to attend the Republican National Convention.

ABC’s George STEPHANOPOULOS at the top of “This Week”: “Plans are being made to have him address the delegates and the nation on video tomorrow night.”

McCain is traveling to Jackson, Miss., today with his wife, Cindy, and running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, where they’ll be met Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R) for a series of briefings. Officials say they’ll make final calls about the convention after the senator gets those briefings.

McCain campaign manager Rick Davis has arrived in the Twin Cities. Campaign and convention officials are talking around the clock.

Convention officials still think an appearance by McCain is LIKELY, although a satellite address from the Gulf coast is possible.

OFFICIALS ARE DEBATING HAVING A TELETHON TO RAISE MONEY FOR HURRICANE RELIEF, OR PERHAPS BRINGING IN THE RED CROSS AND HAVE DELEGATES ASSEMBLE CARE PACKAGES.

Brit HUME on the “Fox News Sunday” roundtable: “I think it’s political correctness, but I think it’s necessary for the Republicans, because the public perception of the handling of Hurricane Katrina is that the administration – and therefore, by extension, the Republicans – made a horrible shambles of it and were insensitive and all that. So you’re going to see maximum sensitivity. It’s going to take some real imagination to figure out a way to present this convention in this context so that it ends up being an effective communication device for this nominee and his running mate. I don’t know how they’re going to do it, but that’s the challenge.”

Politico’s Michael Calderone, “News media follow Gustav south”: “Anderson Cooper, whose television breakthrough occurred while covering Hurricane Katrina three years ago, is CNN’s first big star to change flight plans from St. Paul to New Orleans. [Washington Bureau chief David] Bohrman said he’s coordinating CNN’s convention coverage with the expectation that Cooper will not be in the Twin Cities on Monday. …

“Several Fox anchors will travel to the Gulf from New York, including Geraldo Rivera, Trace Gallagher and Jon Scott. At this point, Fox’s anchors slated to arrive in St. Paul are still going as planned. … ‘It almost feels like having a two-front war,’ said Jay Wallace, Fox News’ vice president of news editorial. Wallace said that Fox has about 350 to 400 staffers involved in the coverage from St. Paul, which is substantial, considering that the major news story could be down in the Gulf.

“In several interviews with those overseeing coordination of the two events, no one could recall when such a large staff as one used to cover a political convention would remain devoted to one story, while a different story ate up more airtime on cable or newspaper front pages. ‘The New York Times has kept the New Orleans story on our front page over the last three years,’ Jill Abramson, the paper’s managing editor, said in an e-mail. Abramson, who plans to travel to St. Paul and who was in Denver last week, said she’s been coordinating with national editor Suzanne Daley since last Wednesday about the political impact of Gustav. Led by reporter Adam Nossiter, the paper will have a team of ‘national correspondents, freelancers and others’ covering the storm, Abramson said.”

PALIN FALLOUT:

Politico’s Jonathan Martin -- “Palin electrifies conservative base”: “Rush Limbaugh, who exulted on the air this week, summed up the response he’s gotten from his loyal listeners: ‘Home f***ing run.’ ‘Palin=Guns, Babies, Jesus,’ he wrote in an email. ‘Contrast that to Obama's bitter clingers. Obama just lost blue-collar, white Democratic voters in Pennsylvania and other states.’ And, he said, the line that the pick was aimed at picking off Democratic women who backed Hillary Rodham Clinton doesn’t get it right. ‘[The] choice is to shore up the conservative, pro-drilling base,’ he said. ‘This is an aggressive, on-offense pick, not a defensive pick.’”

On the “Fox News Sunday” roundtable, Bill Kristol, who predicted the Palin pick before anyone, told Chris Wallace: “Every Republican I talked to after Obama’s pretty spectacular performance was morose. … Now, I think there’s a sense among Republicans that they have a real shot.”

Stephanopoulos, during the roundtable: “I think Joe Biden has to worry about bullying her.”

Politico’s prolific Jonathan Martin recaps Senator McCain’s taped interview with Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday”: “John McCain, in his first television interview since his shocking vice-presidential pick, said that he saw in Sarah Palin ‘a partner and a soul mate.’ … McCain was pressed by Wallace as to whether Palin, a 44-year-old governor who has yet to finish her second year in office, was the most qualified choice he could have made for his number two. ‘What this brings is a spirit of reform and change that is vital now in our nation's capital,’ he offered. And, aping a line often deployed by Barack Obama when he's questioned about his lack of foreign policy credentials, McCain said Palin has ‘got the right judgment.’ Palin, he noted, had backed the surge of troops in Iraq. But McCain did try to point out what experience she had, touting a single visit to Kuwait she made and her role as commander-in-chief of the Alaska National Guard.”

PUNDIT PREP -- WashPost A1, “Influence in Question: Long-Standing Feud in Alaska Embroils Palin,” By James V. Grimaldi and Kimberly Kindy: “For the past several years, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republican vice presidential candidate, has been embroiled in a bitter family feud that has drawn in the state police, the attorney general, the governor's office and the state legislature. “A bipartisan state legislative panel has appointed a special prosecutor to investigate whether Palin improperly brought the family fight into the governor's office. The investigation is focusing on whether she and her aides pressured and ultimately fired the public safety commissioner, Walter Monegan, for not removing Palin's ex-brother-in-law from the state police force. Interviews with principals involved in the dispute and a review of court documents and police internal affairs reports reveal that Palin has been deeply involved in alerting state officials to her family's personal turmoil.”

McCAIN INTERVIEW ABOUT HIS FATHER -- Newsweek Editor Jon Meacham, “Hidden Depths: The scion of a family of warriors, John McCain seems easy to venerate—or caricature. But he is more complex than you may think”: “McCain is not a neo-Victorian, or a neo-Eisenhower. In ways difficult to discern but central to understanding him, he is a very modern figure who is at once heroic and ironic, stoic and sometimes short-tempered, ambitious and rebellious. John McCain is no sun-belt Cincinnatus. He is an eager, cold-eyed politician who has sought the White House for a decade, compromised and reversed himself and believes he is an actor in a grand, unfolding saga. He is also more comfortable with shades of gray than he appears—a sense of nuance rooted, it seems, in an early life in which he at once revered his father and felt sorry for him. McCain has long lived with complexity, and Democrats who try to dismiss him as stubborn or Republicans who venerate him as unflinching miss a crucial truth about the man: he is an adept political juggler, as he has always been an adept emotional one.”

“SCORES OF REPORTERS DESCENDED” -- Gov. Sarah Palin is the cover of the N.Y. Daily News as part of a “GOP in St. Paul” preview – “IN FROM THE COLD: Mother-in-law says she might not vote for her, but will America warm to Sarah Palin?”:

“WASILLA, Alaska - Sarah Palin's hometown rallied around her as mayor - now Republicans wonder if the rest of America will warm up to the surprise pick from cold country. Though her mother-in-law has doubts. Faye Palin admitted she enjoys hearing Barack Obama speak, and still hasn't decided which way she'll vote. ‘We don't agree on everything. But I respect her passion,’ she said. ‘Being pro-life is who Sarah is.’ …

“With a population of just 6,715, Wasilla is a fast-growing railroad town that got its start as a mail and supply hub linking the coastal towns of Seward and Knik to Alaska's interior mining camps along the Iditarod dog sled trail. Scores of reporters descended Saturday on the A-frame wood hunting lodge where Sarah Palin's parents live amid hundreds of sets of trophy antlers and a taxidermy collection that includes a giant moose head and a full-grown mountain lion.”

TALKER -- Classic N.Y. Post cover shows Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) flaked out, asleep, on a chaise lounge in shorts. “CASH COW: Rangel’s shady money from tropical villa”: “Exclusive: TRICKY CHARLIE'S CARIB 'HIDEAWAY' -- SHADY FILINGS ON BEACH-VILLA RENTAL INCOME”: “For 20 years, Harlem Rep. Charles Rangel has owned a beachfront villa in a sun-drenched Dominican Republic resort, yet has only sporadically declared income on the property in federal filings. While the villa was rented to paying guests for the past two years, for instance, Rangel reported no income from it in 2006 and 2007, The Post has learned. As a congressman, failure to fully list all income and investments can result in civil penalties or criminal charges.

“The powerful Ways and Means Committee chairman, a Democrat, owns ‘casita’ No. 412 on the Caribbean Sea at the Punta Cana Hotel, on the lush eastern tip of the country, where he is affectionately known as ‘el senador.’ His three-bedroom, three-bath villa, which can accommodate three couples, is rented for between $500 in the low season to $1,100 a night in the busiest tourist season and is one of the resort's most popular, managers and staff say. ‘You are requesting the best casita on the beach,’ a reservations manager told a Post reporter posing as a customer. ‘We are always booked solid on that one between December 15 and April 15. It is always the first one to go,’ he said. …

“Rangel's financial disclosure forms, which members of Congress must file annually to the clerk of the House of Representatives, checks ‘none’ for income from the property in 2006 and 2007. ‘I have not received any rental income,’ Rangel said when asked about the villa last week. ‘There wasn't any income.’ … Rangel refused to answer further questions about his investment, saying, ‘I think that's a private matter.’” The photo caption: “SLEEPING BOOTY: Charles Rangel dozes on the beach at the Punta Cana Resort, where he owns and rents out a villa. He was squeezing in some vacation time before attending the Democratic convention, where he appeared with Hillary Clinton.”

THE BIG PICTURE – N.Y. Times col. 1, “Campaigns Shift as McCain Choice Alters the Race – Rethinking Their Strategies – With Palin, a Focus on Women, Evangelicals and Swing States” – By Adam Nagourney, Jim Rutenberg and Jeff Zeleny, says Obama advisers are struggling “to figure out how to challenge the credentials and the ideology of a woman whose candidacy could be embraced by many women as a historic milestone”: “Mr. Obama’s campaign does not plan to go directly after Ms. Palin in the days ahead. Instead, it is planning to increase its attacks on Mr. McCain for his opposition to pay equity legislation and abortion rights — two issues of paramount concern to many women — as it tries to head off his effort to use Ms. Palin to draw Democratic and independent women who had supported Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.

“Mr. McCain’s advisers said that rallying wavering women would be one of Ms. Palin’s main jobs in the weeks ahead. They said her campaign schedule would take her to areas in swing states like Ohio and Pennsylvania where there were pockets of women who had supported Mrs. Clinton in the primaries. At the same time, they suggested, Ms. Palin would also be given the task of appealing to evangelical voters, who have long been unenthusiastic about Mr. McCain. In many ways, the choice of Ms. Palin may prove to have been as much an effort to drive up turnout among the Republican base as it was a move to compete for women. ‘We had a solid Republican and evangelical base,’ said Charlie Black, a senior adviser to Mr. McCain. ‘But now it’s going to be very intense.’”

Also on N.Y. Times front – “Pain Gets Women’s Attention, Not Necessarily Their Support,” By Jackie Calmes.

SMITH POINT AIR: The 2:30 p.m. flight from DCA to MSP was like a 1950s throwback to the days when people dressed up to travel, with a manifest that included Amanda HENNEBERG, Tammy HADDAD, Alex CASTELLANOS, Michael BARONE, Todd HARRIS, Rob SALITERMAN and Fred Dalton THOMPSON.

Pool report: “Ok you really can't make this up. The flight attendant just came on the PA and goes ‘Alex cas-TILL-os, please ring your flight button. Alex cas-TILL-os, please right your flight button.’ Everyone bursts out laughing at the mispronunciation. Alex shouts ‘junior or senior?’ Then some guy (not me) in the back of the plane shouts ‘everyone's emailing mike allen about this right now!’”

NOTED: Aaron Baer is a bigger deal at the Minneapolis airport baggage claim than Fred Thompson.

ASK JOHN DICKERSON how he enjoyed the chocolate-covered bacon at the Minnesota State Fair.

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Authors:

About The Author

Mike Allen is the chief White House correspondent for POLITICO. He comes to us from Time magazine where he was their White House correspondent. Prior to that, Allen spent six years at The Washington Post, where he covered President Bush's first term, Capitol Hill, campaign finance, and the Bush, Gore and Bradley campaigns of 2000. Before turning to national politics, he covered schools and local governments in rural counties outside Fredericksburg, Va., for The Free Lance-Star, then wrote about Doug Wilder, Oliver North, Chuck Robb and the Bobbitts for the Richmond Times-Dispatch, where he nurtured police sources on overnight ride-alongs through housing projects. Allen also covered Mayor Giuliani, the Connecticut statehouse and the wacky rich of Greenwich for The New York Times. Before moving to The Times, he did stints in the Richmond and Alexandria bureaus of The Washington Post. Allen grew up in Orange County, Calif., and has a B.A. from Washington and Lee University, where he majored in politics and journalism.